Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

All
through 2012 I kept telling myself that, if I could just wait it out until the
elections, a majority of Americans would surely set things right by electing
Mitt Romney, but we have since learned that he was a reluctant candidate who,
if we are to believe his son—and I think we can—really didn’t want to get in
the race, but thought the others in the primaries had little chance of winning.

I won’t
blame Romney for the loss. Running against an incumbent President has rarely
yielded victory. He had all the right qualifications, but he always struck me
as just “too nice” and, as we know, Republicans were reluctant to tear into
Obama’s appalling record on the economy and other issues. Like Romney, they are
“too nice” despite being up against political thugs.

I think
2013 is going to be a very unlucky year for the United States and it has a lot
to do with the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is now free to finish off his
destruction of America because he does not have to run again for office.

Anyone who
has seen Obama in action over the past four years has reason to fear 2013 and
beyond. Any man who wants to be President has to have a lot of confidence in
himself and a very thick skin. Obama, however, turns every occasion, including
the recent funeral service of Sen. Denial Inouye, into an opportunity to talk
about himself. A National Standard
article noted that during the recent funeral for Hawaii senator Daniel Inouye,
Obama “in the short 1,600 word speech…used the word "my" 21 times,
"me" 12 times, and "I" 30 times.”

Obama is
the center of his own Marxist universe.

In his
first term, we had an opportunity to see how he judges leadership. His cabinet
choices and his unconstitutional layer of unaccountable “czars” who really
determine policy were the kind of people willing to say anything and do
anything to advance some very dubious policies. Billions lost on “green” corporations
that could not compete and the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler left the
taxpayer for a loss of more billions. His energy policy has diminished the use
of coal despite the fact that the U.S. sits atop hundreds of years of this
energy source that was the source of 50% of all the electricity Americans use
when he took office and is now in decline.

His famed
“apology” tour to the Middle East included a speech in Cairo, a city that
exploded in rebellion against Egypt’s president reflecting similar events in
Tunisia and in Libya. Whoever was advising the President clearly did not see
any of this coming and were unprepared with a cogent policy when they did. The
on-going slaughter in Syria has left America weakened on the international
scene where the President’s preference to “lead from behind” has rendered our Middle
Eastern foreign policy a joke.

When our
ambassador to Libya was killed along with three others on his staff, it was
obvious that the State Department had failed to respond to his many requests
for increased security. This was then compounded by the most outrageous lies
about the actual attack which was witnessed in real time in the White House via
satellite. Only a President with contempt for the intelligence of Americans
would attempt to pass off the attack as being unrelated to al Qaeda and the
result of a video no one had seen. This is a scandal that rivals Watergate, an earlier
government cover-up in which no one died.

Here
again, 2013 will not bode well if Obama’s choice for the next Secretary of
State, John Kerry, is confirmed as is expected. America first became aware of
Kerry when, as a young veteran of Vietnam, he accused his fellow soldiers of
offenses that were later proven to have no basis in fact. He threw away his
combat medals. In the 1980s, Kerry campaigned for a nuclear freeze and the
Obama administration has been reducing our nuclear arms arsenal at the worst
possible time. Iran is just months away from having its own nuclear arms and,
after that, no one can predict what they will do with them, but you can be sure
they will use them. Obama’s promises to ensure they do not are worthless.

Obama’s
reported choice for the next Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, is already
running into strong resistance for a variety of reasons, not the least of which
is the perception that he is an anti-Semite. He has a record of favoring the
downsizing of the military and regarded as a defeatist during the conflicts
with Iraq and Afghanistan. If the sequestration cuts kick in, the Pentagon will
lose nine percent of its budget, affecting the nation’s defense industries,
affecting thousands of jobs. It is preparing to furlough 800,000 civilian
employees.

If she
stays on, the Secretary of Health, Kathleen Sebelius, will continue her
relentless attack on the nation’s health system, once widely regarded as one of
the best in the world, but now a model of socialized medicine that will end up
killing people judged too old or too sick to receive care. At the last count,
at least twenty states are in open rebellion, refusing to set up “exchanges” to
purchase insurance whose rates will rise exponentially. One can be fined for
not buying it.

His
Secretary of Treasury, Tim Geithner, has urged that Congress forego its constitutional
duty to set the “ceiling” on borrowing despite the fact that no nation has ever
been able to spend its way out of debt.

We arrive
at 2013 with a Congress that has not passed a budget in three years, despite
comparable bills to address spending put forth by the House and rejected by the
Senate. Obama has refused to negotiate or compromise with the House, a process
that has been going on since his failure to act on the recommendations of his
own Simpson-Bowes Commission to reduce government spending. The debt has swelled
by $6 trillion dollars in his first term to an unsustainable $16 trillion.

A Congress
in political gridlock is the worst possible way to begin a new year. A U.S.
population, half of which is dependent through various “entitlement” and government
giveaway programs, is being purposely impoverished by policies that have
thwarted job creation and economic growth. Too many Americans not only do not
grasp this, but do not care.

Only the
most feckless and indifferent President ever elected would have put the nation
in this vice, but as I have written over the years, the choice of Obama, a
virtually unknown first term Senator, was made by a cabal of those who have
waited years to destroy the nation, once the only real beacon of freedom in the
world.

Meanwhile,
Americans are rushing to arm themselves and may well regard the government as
the real threat; one that regards the Constitution as a pliable document it may
interpret any way it wants.

2013 is
likely to be remembered as the year that everything began to come unglued
around the world. Islamic fanaticism is raging throughout the Middle East and
parts of Africa. The Chinese are asserting increased control over their part of
the world, challenging our allies, Japan, the Phillippines, and others. North
Korea is making and selling missiles and nuclear arms as fast as they can.
Russia senses opportunities to flex its muscles.

Only the
military and diplomatic power of the United States has held the world together
since the end of World War II when the U.S. became the world’s policeman for
lack of any other power to protect the global sea lanes and deter despots. Those
days are over.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Pundits
and experts of every description love to predict and pontificate. That they are
often famously wrong doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

The Great
Depression began on October 29, 1929 with the stock market crash. On October 17th,
Irving Fisher, a professor of economics at Yale University, said, “Stocks have
reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”A month later Fisher said, “The end of the
decline of the stock market will probably not be long, only a few more days at
best.” The Great Depression stretched for ten years, in good part due to the
“progressive” policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was elected and
reelected to four terms!

Not to be
outdone, the Harvard Economic Society issued a number of predictions that were
equally idiotic. “Since our monetary and credit structure is not only sound,
but unusually strong…there is every prospect that the recovery which we have been
expecting will not be long delayed.”It
took the advent of World War II to energize the manufacturing sector and
increase employment. By the time the war was over the U.S. had, for its time, a
huge national debt, but it was far better positioned for recovery than Europe
or other war damaged nations.

Every
recession since then has had experts predicting upturns just around the corner,
but as Obamacare and its hidden taxes kicks in this year and next, when the
Bush tax cuts have been allowed to expire, at a time when the nation is $16
trillion dollars in debt (and growing), and when its credit rating—for the
first time in its history—was downgraded, a new recession is not going to go
away any time soon. And this time Obama will not be able to blame it on George
Bush.

Matthew
26:11 says, “The poor you will always have with you”, but there is a strong
possibility that most progressives have not read either the Old or New
Testaments or, if they did, dismissed them as fairy tales.

In 1965,
President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “So here is the Great Society. It’s the
time—and it’s going to be soon—when nobody in this country is poor.” How did
that government program work out? Johnson would be been better served if he had
listened to Thomas Jefferson who said, “The democracy
will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and
give to those who would not.” And “I predict future happiness for Americans if
they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the
pretense of taking care of them.”

Like
Europe before it, America has succumbed to the siren call of Communism because
(a) no one seems to learn anything from history and (b) most people would
rather have the government tell them what to do and how to spend what little
money they are permitted to keep. When Karl Marx died, most of his obituaries were
wrong. The Neue Freie Press in Vienna, Austria wrote “Marx’s scholarship was an
imaginative lie, his doctrine despair. The damage he created will pass like a
corpse.”

Published
in 1997, The Black Book of Communism:
Crimes, Terror,Repressiondocumented a history of repressions by Communist states that included
genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and artificial famines. At
the time of its publication, the total stood at 97 million.

Former
Soviet premier, Nikita Krushchev, addressing Western diplomats in 1956, said
“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” It
helps that Americans elected—twice—a dedicated Communist. The history of
Communist infiltration goes back to the Russian revolution that took power in
1917. By the 1950s, the U.S. government was shot through with Communists and
“fellow travelers”, sympathizers. In the 1960s the subversion of the nation’s
schools began in earnest and it should come as no surprise that former domestic
terrorist, Bill Ayers, a longtime ally of Obama, transitioned to academia where
he became an “expert” on education in America.

Just as
liberals would wish away war, there hasn’t been a day since the end of World
War II when war has not been occurring somewhere on the planet and the U.S.
engaged in them in Korea, in Vietnam, and in the Middle East, not counting peace-keeping
efforts and minor engagements. War is the natural condition of mankind, occasioned
by the lust for power in the hearts of despots of every description.

In the
run-up to World War Two, Frank Knox, the publisher of the Chicago Daily News
and a former Republican Vice President nominee said “It is simply unthinkable
that we will ever again send overseas a great expeditionary force of armed
men.” The year was 1940. So, yes, Republicans can be wrong, too. That same
year, Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans, “I give you one more assurance. I
have said this before, but I say it again and again and again; your boys are
not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” That changed on December 7, 1941.

You could
fill a book about how wrong those making predictions and promises have been, so
it behooves us all to view what is being said in the White House, in Congress,
and elsewhere as to the direction the nation is taking. Extreme skepticism is
the only way to approach the politicians and the “chatterati” on the airwaves.

The
nation’s media has already hidden the scandals of ‘Fast and Furious’ and of
Benghazi from public view. They make no mention of how an unread, 2,000-plus
“Obamacare” was foisted on the nation by a Democrat party-line vote in the
Senate on December 24, 2009, Christmas Eve! Obama signed it into law in March
2010.

There’s a
reason thousands of Americans have been purchasing guns of all description and
laying up stores of ammunition and it may go beyond concerns of gun bans. A lot
of patriots think that 2013 could turn very ugly, very fast, with fears of
martial law, Homeland Security goons, mass arrests, secret incarcerations, and
worse. I have doubts about these scenarios, but they have long been a part of
the arsenal of oppressive governments.

The
trigger, however, for such scenarios would be the collapse of the U.S. dollar
and there are signs—the massive national debt, the continued government
borrowing and spending—that suggest this is a very real possibility. If and
when that occurs, all bets are off.

What
stands between most Americans and those who might wish to engineer the end to
the Constitution is the fact that America is home to hundreds of thousands of
hunters who comprise, by virtue of being armed, the largest army in the world.
A goodly portion of our law enforcement community and our military are going to
refuse orders to turn their guns on their fellow Americans and doing so would
prove to be unhealthy.

Revolution
is never pretty, but Americans did it once and can do it again to protect the
Constitution and our rights. In a sharply divided nation, however, the level of
resistance is unknown when so many now depend on the government for support.
Many will prefer their chains.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Thursday, December 27, 2012

If it
sometimes seems to you that every single animal and reptile is endangered, you
can thank that element of the environmental and animal rights movements that
has spent millions to foster this absurd belief. Animals and reptiles, fish and
birds, lizards and turtles, all are born in the wild and all are food for other
species. Nature doesn’t pick favorites, but thanks to the Endangered Species
Act (ESA), humans do.

I say “the
wild”, but the wild is not some far off place, but rather, for example, it is the
vast forested area along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Virginia and beyond.
The “wild” has become our backyards as suburbs have become the home of choice
for most Americans.

As often
as not, those creatures are simply pawns in the environmental movement’s effort
to close off vast portions of the nation’s landmass to access from the energy
industries, the timber industry, agricultural interests, and any form of
development from new housing to hospitals.

Enacted in
1973, the ESA has become the most pernicious piece of legislation foisted on a
public that loves animals, but usually only in the abstract except for those
who are pet owners who enjoy the companionship, mostly of dogs and cats. Other
species may co-exist in beneficial ways, but they don’t adopt one another, nor
do they intervene in the way the ESA does.

A couple
of recent news stories illustrate how a noble human emotion, empathy, results in
some outcomes that don’t reflect good judgment. Take, for instance, the Tampa
Bay, Florida woman who ignored signs prohibiting contact with manatees.
Videotaped climbing on several of them, she faces a stiff fine against touching
them. Florida wants to protect these gentle vegetarians and to ensure they can
continue their lives while avoiding dangers from boats whose propellers can cut
or kill them. That just makes sense.

Contrast
that with an article in New Jersey’s largest daily newspaper about Clinton
Township residents who believe coyotes killed a deer. One family reported that
is common to hear coyotes howling at night. Ah, Nature! But New Jersey?

Yes, New
Jersey where its huge deer population thrives, often becoming road kill when a
car crashes into them, endangering the drivers and passengers. A year ago the
county in which I live had to authorize a deer kill in a reservation area, a
watershed I have lived nearby my whole life. The deer were destroying it by
eating the ground cover and any new trees. Where you find deer, you are likely
to find clusters of Lyme disease since the ticks that are their parasites
spread it to humans.

A large
bear population requires New Jersey to have a hunting season for them. In
recent years, this has been regularly challenged by those who have appointed
themselves their guardians, but ask any Garden State resident that finds one in
their back yard or on their porch and you will learn of the fear they generate.
The state, like others, is home to Canada geese. Huge flocks of these birds
befoul parks, golf courses, and other open areas they favor with their
droppings. It was a geese collision that forced US Airways Flight 1549 to ditch
in the Hudson River in 2009.

As a
lifelong resident of New Jersey, I can assure you that there is no lack of
raccoons, opossums, rabbits, and other wildlife. We have been told for decades
that the growth of the suburbs is adversely affecting wildlife, but you would
not know that if you lived here. They adapt! The bears break into garbage cans,
eat the seeds in bird feeders. The coyotes will make off with a family pet for
a tasty dinner. The deer eat expensive foliage and the crops that our farmers
raise. It’s not called the Garden State for nothing.

This
phenomenon is so widespread that Jim Sterba has authored “Nature Wars: The
Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into
Battlegrounds.”The woods that Dorothy
passed through to get to Oz was filled with “lions and tigers and bears, oh
my”, but throughout suburban America, they also include cougars, coyotes, deer,
and bears.

In
general, the ESA has been a huge failure. Only a handful of species of the
hundreds deemed “endangered” have been restored to a larger population. The
real purpose of the ESA is not about protecting creatures. It is about
thwarting all manner of development, but most especially, access to areas where
vast amounts of oil, natural gas, and coal exist, waiting to be extracted. The
most endangered species in America today are the hundreds of jobs (and revenue)
that this represents.

“The U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced that it will formally consider listing
the Lesser Prairie Chicken—whose habitat includes some of the nation’s major
energy fields—as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.” Porter
identified this as “a desperate ploy by the Obama administration to further its
campaign against oil and gas drilling.” The chicken is a ground-nesting bird
native to portions of Texas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

The effort
to list the prairie chicken is similar to an earlier effort to list the Dunes
Sagebrush Lizard, overlapping the same area as the chicken. Fortunately it
failed, but it drains revenue and time from those states that must invest both
to resist such listings in the effort to protect access to the energy reserves
beneath their ground.

By
September 2011, the Associated Press reported that there were more than 700
pending cases to declare “endangered” everything from the golden-winged
warbler, the American eel, and the tiny Texas kangaroo rat. Yes, a rat!

The U.S.
Forest and Wildlife Service had “issued decisions advancing more than 500
species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act.”

It is time
to end the Endangered Species Act as a very bad piece of legislation whose
intent has nothing to do with protecting these creatures whose populations are
exploding everywhere and everything to do with harming the economy of the
nation. They don’t need protecting. They are surviving in spades!

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Like so
much else that involves the absurd “renewable energy” scam—wind, solar power
and ethanol—the public remains largely in the dark about its actual costs. They
come straight out of their pockets in the form of higher costs for electricity
and, in the cast of ethanol, lost mileage and engine damage.

At the end
of this year, unless Congress does something spectacularly stupid—always a
possibility—the Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) will expire. If extended for
just one more year, it will cost $12 billion. If wind energy was (1) reliable
and (2) economical, one could make a case for it, but it is the very opposite.

Thomas
Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, says “The wind industry claims
a PTC extension will create 37,000 jobs. At a $12 billion price tag, that’s
$327,000 taxpayer dollars for every job. But even with the PTC, the industry
lost 10,000 jobs between 2009 and 2010, a 12% drop.”

Another
way the wind industry has stayed in business, but not in the competitive sense
of other industries, has been renewable energy mandates that require state
utilities to purchase wind powered electricity generation. Many states have
opted out of such mandates as they realized the cost to consumers.

The wind
industry in America, according to Pyle, has cost taxpayers $20 billion over the
past two decades “and, today, the PTC is so lavish that wind producers are
actually paying the electricity grid to take their power, just so they can
collect more taxpayer money.”

All the
economic advances America has made have been the result of the discovery and
utilization of energy generation from oil, natural gas, and coal. If you want
to harm America in the most fundamental way, you would attack these sources of
energy and that is exactly what the Obama administration has been doing since
it took power. For decades coal represented fifty percent of all the
electricity used, but incessant attacks by the Environmental Protection Agency,
using clean air regulations, has reduced this significantly.

The reality is that 94% of all
electricity generated in America comes from traditional sources, coal, natural
gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power. America is home to century’s worth of
inexpensive coal, is the largest producer of natural gas, and invented nuclear
power.

The
absolute least sensible way to generate electricity is wind power, followed
closely by solar power. Since the wind does not blow all the time or with
sufficient ability to turn the blades of the huge turbines, it would seem
obvious that wind is a moronic way to produce electricity, but that has not
kept those reaping taxpayer tax credits and benefitting from mandates for its
use from lining their pockets.

It is a
curiosity of the debate over wind power that its impact on bird and bat species
is rarely, if ever, discussed or reported. In a recent article, Paul Driessen
noted that “The impact of mandated, subsidized and ‘production tax credited’
industrial wind facilities on eagles, whooping cranes, bads, and other value
species is horrendous, ecologically devastating, intolerable—and growing. In
fact, it is infinitely worse than the widely quoted figure of 440,000 birds per
year…the actual USA death toll is 13,000,000 to 39,000,000 birds and bats every
year!”

The expert
I turn to for information about wind power is John Droz, Jr., a physicist and a
leading activist against its use whose website is worth visiting.

Wind power
doesn’t meet any of the major criteria for the generation of electricity. Droz points
out that it only produces about 30% of the power it allegedly can or should
produce. This is because “it takes over one thousand times the amount of land
for wind power” that a single nuclear power plant produces. Moreover, that land
has to be located far from the cities and suburbs that need to access its
power.

Is wind
power reliable or even predictable? Compared to traditional power generators,
it doesn’t come close compared to the standards set for them. Indeed, “when
power is really needed,” notes Droz, such as hot summer afternoons, “wind is
usually on vacation.” It most certainly cannot be depended upon to dispatch
power to the grid on demand, nor can it supply power reliably to meet a 24/7
demand.

Along with
the Wind Protection Tax Credit, the industry is subsidized far more than any
conventional power source, Cost per megawatt-hour, according to the U.S. Energy
Information Agency, is subsidized to the tune of $23 per megawatt-hour. Compare
that with coal that receives 44 cents! Natural gas at 25 cents! Hydroelectric
at 67 cents, and nuclear power at $1.59.

The
advocates of wind power are the same charlatans who keep shouting about carbon
dioxide (CO2) as the cause of global warming—and now “climate change—when CO2
plays no role whatever in causing or changing the climate. It is also touted as
being environmentally beneficial, but tell that to the thousands of bird and
bat species the wind turbines kill every year.

Allowing
the PTC to expire at the end of the year will not mark the end of wind power,
but it will surely make it even less competitive in the years ahead and, like
other nations that bought into this fairy tale, those dependent on it are going
to suffer some dire consequences, particularly as the current cooling cycle the
Earth has been in for the last sixteen years deepens.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

This is for all
those who voted to reelect Obama or those who stayed home on Election Day
2012 because they found Republican candidates who talked about unemployment and the need
for more jobs unappealing.

The blame
falls on the Democratic Party that controls the Senate and the White House. The
blame falls on the Republican Party that needs to grow a new backbone instead
of looking for ways to compromise with an administration bent on the
destruction of the nation.

What
awaits Americans in 2013 is the largest tax increase in the history of the
nation and it is not because the Republicans in the House of Representatives
did not propose and pass one plan after another to avoid it.

What
awaits Americans in 2013 is the result of the failure and refusal of Congress
to reform a huge and horrible tax code that even Certified Public Accountants and IRS bureaucrats
cannot fathom and, unless an alternative minimum tax "fix" is quickly approved, the IRS has notified Congress that up to 100 million
taxpayers will have to wait to file while it overhauls its computers.

Failing to
act on the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowes Commission to reduce government
spending, reform the tax code, and save the “entitlement” programs, and ignored by the President, resulted in a “sequestration”
program of automatic, draconian reductions that will cut the defense budget at
a time when it is our primary deterrent to attacks on the homeland and the protection of our interests
around the world.

Across the board cuts will impact all aspects of life in
America; reductions in government spending that should have been introduced in a sensible, reasoned manner.

Remember
George W. Bush who Obama insisted was to blame for the economy he “inherited”?
The roll-back of the Bush-era tax cuts will impose increased taxes on families
making between $50,000 and $75,000 that are estimated to take $2,400 from them
according to one non-partisan study.

Investment taxes will increase as well.
The capital gains rate will increase from 15% to 20% for investors.
Dividends would be taxed like regular income, affecting decisions to purchase stocks that aid the growth and expansion of corporations large and small.

An estate tax will impact families seeking to pass on their properties and
savings to the next generation.

The
Congressional Budget Office predicts the nation could lose 3.4 million jobs in
2013. Meanwhile, jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed are set to
expire next year. The maximum 73 weeks in state and federal benefits will fall
to 26 weeks, affecting two million jobless Americans now receiving them.

The U.S.
has functioned without a budget for the past three years and one that was
submitted by the President was soundly rejected by Congress.

Millions
of Americans who saved for retirement and those on fixed incomes will suffer as
these tax increases occur.

Millions of employers will put their workers on a
“part-time” status to avoid Obamacare mandates, reducing their income.

Obamacare was judged to be a tax by a Supreme
Court that failed to give weight to the requirement that Americans must now
purchase health insurance whether they want to or need to. This directly
contravenes the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Some twenty states have
refused to set up the insurance “exchanges” required by the law. Others
struggle under the current Medicaid mandates.

This is
misfeasance—the improper and unlawful execution of an act that in itself is
lawful—by a Congress charged with the governance of the nation.

Politics
has always been understood as reasoned compromise between those elected to office, but
as we have seen in the weeks leading up to the so-called “fiscal cliff”, the
President has refused to negotiate in good faith or to compromise. No doubt he
plans to blame the Republicans for the ills of the nation.

As a
result, Americans will keep or spend less of their earnings and millions more will be
thrown into unemployment.

Most are
unaware of these realities. While all this occurs, the nation’s debt of $16
trillion continues to grow in a nation whose Gross Domestic Product—the
earnings from all its goods and services—stands around $14 trillion. This is
unsustainable and it threatens the future of the nation whose credit rating is
likely to be reduced.

Adam Lanza
didn’t just kill twenty children and six teachers and staff on December 14th.
He killed Christmas 2012 with his dark shadow of insanity and evil. He killed
the zone of safety that we ascribe to elementary schools when we send our
children there. He made us all afraid for our own safety.

Lanza’s
act sparked a dash to gun stores and shows across the nation to purchase guns
and he gave all the gun-grabbers an excuse to propose still more laws against
gun ownership that fail to protect people in the moments when they are
threatened.

In the
week that followed, during the media coverage of Christmas Day, and around the
dinner tables of America as families gathered, his deranged act took away some
of the joy of the holiday. For the families of the victims, it turned Christmas
into a day of mourning.

There will
be many more Christmases to come and this one in 2012 will fade from memory,
but this one, when recalled, will be done with a shudder; a reminder that there
is incomprehensible evil in the world and a constant need to be armed against
it.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Reports of
recent blizzards in the Midwest and Northwest filled the television news and
print media, but blizzards have always been part of the history of the nation
and are occurring worldwide, taking a human toll.

We tend to
dig out and forget them, but they are testimony to the power of Nature and have
nothing to do with “climate change.” The four seasons are “climate change.”
Blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods are “climate change.” It is wise
to keep this in mind.

In the
northeast, the great blizzard of 1888, March 11-14, wrote a chapter in the
history books as one of the most severe. Snowfalls of 40-50 inches fell in New
York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. It had sustained winds of
more than 45 miles per hour and produced snowdrifts as high as 50 feet.

In a new
book, “Disaster! A History of Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other
Catastrophes” by John Withington ($14.95, Skyhorse Publishing, softcover)
provides a look at some of the greatest blizzards to strike the nation. Writing
about the Blizzard of 88, the author notes that “It paralyzed the east coast of
the United States from Chesapeake Bay to Maine, as well as affecting parts of
Canada.” The great plains of the nation had been hit by a comparable blizzard
just three months earlier in January 1888. It killed an estimated 236 people.

The
Blizzard of 88 literally shut down life for those impacted by it. “On land, an
estimated 400 people died, including 100 in New York City. At least 100 seamen
died.” It led to the creation of a subway system that was authorized in 1894.

There was
no blather about “climate change” because people understood it was a natural
event. Just like Hurricane Sandy or, earlier, Hurricane Katrina, that struck
New Orleans and the Gulf States.

While
there have been any number of big storms that have struck the nation, a blizzard in March 1993 was called “the storm of the
century.” As with Hurricane Sandy, it was forecast due to advances in
meteorology such as weather satellites. “On 12 March, though, snow began to
fall as far south as Georgia and Alabama, with Birmingham recording twelve
inches.” It closed airports from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Atlanta, Georgia.
Altogether, 500 people died, many from heart attacks as they shoveled snow.”

IceAgeNow.info,
a website maintained by Robert W. Felix, the author of “Not by Fire, But by
Ice”, arguably the leading authority on past ice ages and based on the best
science available, notes that the planet is on the cusp of a new ice age. His
website tracks news of frigid weather events.

Since
December 21, IceAgeNow has reported that dozens died in a Ukrainian “cold snap”
that recorded at least 83 deaths, gripping that nation. In Poland, more than 60
have died since October. At the same time, heavy snowfalls
occurred in Bulgaria. Russia has been particularly hard hit.

In the U.S.
up to 18 inches of snow fell on West Virginia and we have noted the recent
blizzard that hit the Midwest. California’s mountains have experienced heavy
snowfall with 13 feet recorded on Mt. Shasta.

There is a strong possibility of more monster storms in
America and worldwide. It could portend a new ice age because the average
length of interglacial periods between
ice ages is 11.500 and that is the length of time since the last ice age.

In
addition, solar scientists are worrying about a natural cycle of the sun which
is producing less radiation (warmth) in recent years.

When people like Sen. John Kerry, nominated to be the next
Secretary of State, cites global warming as “the greatest long term threat to
our national security” you need to pay attention because it demonstrates not
just ignorance of the facts, but a dangerous stupidity.

As Dr. E. Kirsten Peters says in her new book, “The Whole
Story of Climate: What Science Reveals About the Nature of Constant Change”,
“Thus, if the Earth continues to behave as she has for the past two million
years, we must expect a return to bitter cold at some point, with ice sheets
that reach as far south as Nebraska once again. And, as scientists have
recently learned, the change to that bitterly cold climate regime is likely to
be fast, happening over a generation or two.”

“If we think of climate change as our enemy, we will always
be defeated.” The last ice age was one in which “glaciers had once buried much
of Europe and a good measure of North America.”

This is the reason to ignore the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that has been falsely predicting
global warming since it conjured up the Kyoto Protocols in 1997 to require
participating nations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that it claims cause
global warming; a warming that is not happening and a baseless claim.

It is a reason to ignore and excoriate Al Gore who has
greatly profited from the global warming scare campaign. It is a reason to be
deeply suspicious of President Obama who continues to speak of “climate change”
and the members and agencies of his administration such as the Environmental
Protection Agency that justify a flood of regulations based on this false
claim.

The politicians and pseudo-scientists have misled Americans
and others worldwide who are beginning to experience a very different reality.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Driving
around my hometown and surrounding communities in New Jersey, a familiar sight
has been tree stumps, the wreckage left behind by Hurricane Sandy. Having lived
here with few breaks my entire life, it never occurred to me how many trees
there are. From a lookout point in the Essex County South Mountain Reservation
area one sees in the distance the city of New York.

As far as
the eye can see, it is entirely forested.

In an
interesting new book, “Nature Wars”, by Jim Sterba, a veteran journalist, takes
the reader on a journey to America’s long ago past and brings him to the
present. In the process, he removes a lot of mythology and replaces it with
some extraordinary facts that are the background for the way our modern
lifestyles put us in conflict with many species that are not only thriving, but
some which faced virtual extinction from over-hunting, especially during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

“In the
eastern United States over two and a half centuries,” Sterba notes, “European
settlers cleared away more than 250 million acres of forest. By the 1950s,
depending on the region, nearly half to more than two-thirds of the landscape
was reforested, and in the last half-century, states in the Northeast and
Midwest have added more than 11 million acres of forest. These new forests grew
back right under the noses of several generations of Americans.”

The storm
surge of Hurricane Sandy, the waters that flooded the coastal areas of New
Jersey, Manhattan and Staten Island did a lot of damage, but the loss of
electricity was largely the result of countless fallen trees disrupting the
huge network of electrical wires that our way of life depends upon. We live in
a forest. Indeed, much of the U.S. population lives in a forest.

What I
found interesting about “Nature Wars” was the way Sterba revealed that, despite
what the growing population of the Northeast did to alter the landscape,
particularly as regards the clearing of land for the agriculture they depended
upon, in addition to hunting its wildlife for meat and fish, Nature quite
simply reclaimed the land as the farmers abandoned the rock-filled lands of
Massachusetts and other early colonies. In the wake of Independence are more
people arrived, Americans pushed westward.

The
“wilderness” of earliest settlers was often nothing more than ten miles inland.
By the time of Independence in 1776, “The colonial population stood at three
million and people were already trickling across the Appalachians.” Wood,
however, was the primary fuel and was used for construction. “By 1850, the U.S.
population had grown to 23.3 million, and wood supplied 90 percent of the
nation’s energy needs.”

What saved
the forests was the discovery of oil, natural gas, and the use of coal as new sources
of energy. For farming, the use of draft animals became obsolete. By 1990 new
technologies enabled farmers to grow five times more food per acre than farmers
in 1930 had grown and they farmed fewer acres.

What saved
the forested areas was a growing conservation movement. “By 1909, at the end of
the Theodore Roosevelt presidency, some 172 million acres of public land in the
West had been designated as national forests.” In the 1930s, an estimated one
million acres of trees were replanted during the 1930s.

As Sterba
notes, “Most of the eastern forest that grew back in the nineteenth of
twentieth centuries remained forest in the twenty-first century, including 79
percent of the landscape of New England.”

By 2000,
“For the first time an absolute majority of American people lived not in
cities, not on farms, but in an ever-expanding suburban and exurban sprawl in
between. Never in history have so many people lived this way.”

One of the
great ironies of the renewal of forests everywhere, but especially in the areas
where so many Americans live, has been the way many animal species have adapted
to their human neighbors and have caused endless disputes as they have thrived
and grown in numbers. As Sterba says, “Sprawl has become their home.”

If more
Americans understood these relationships instead of taking their understanding
from films like “Bambi” or the many documentaries we can watch in the comfort
of our homes, there would be a greater understanding of the vast forces of
Nature with which we can only seek to accommodate our lifestyle choices and a
greater respect for forces like Hurricane Sandy that are well beyond our
ability to do anything other than to clean up and rebuild.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Thursday, December 20, 2012

For years,
decades actually, I and others have been shouting from the rooftops that global
warming was a hoax. We were called “deniers” and “skeptics.” A lot of time has
passed since the late 1980s when Dr. James Hansen, the director of NASA’s
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, kicked off the global warming hoax with
testimony before Congress.

Global
warming gained momentum because the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) seized on it as a means to redistribute the wealth from
developed nations to those that have lagged behind and because the media love
stories of imminent danger. The media remains largely committed to global
warming despite ample evidence it is (a) not happening and (b) a complete lie.

While many
regard former Vice President Al Gore as the poster boy of global warming, it
has been the IPCC that has been the main culprit in advancing the hoax, issuing
reports of dire consequences if nations do not reduce their “greenhouse gas”
emissions (mainly carbon dioxide abbreviated as CO2) to avoid a dramatically
increased warming in ten, twenty, or fifty years. As time went along, global
warming was coming any day now, but it never seemed to arrive.

The
problem the lead scientists providing the bogus data to support the IPCC
reports encountered was the perfectly natural
cooling cycle the Earth entered about sixteen years ago. In 2009, a leak of
emails between them was dubbed “Climategate” as it revealed how these conspirators
were panicked by the cooling that began to occur around 1998. It also revealed
their efforts to smear scientists who dissented from their claims as “deniers”
and “skeptics” and plotted to deny them access to leading science publications.

The
primary claim made by the IPCC and other “warmists” was that there was a
“consensus” among the world’s scientists, but anyone familiar with science
knows that it does not operate on consensus. Instead, each new hypothesis or
theory is always challenged, often for decades, until it is proven to be
reproducible and resistant to alternative interpretation.

Recently I received a report that one of the IPCC
researchers, Alec Rawls, no longer wanted to be a party to its reports. Rawls reportedly said, “I participated in ‘expert review’ of the
Second Order Draft of AR5 (the next IPCC report), Working Group 1 (“The
Scientific Basis”) and am now making the full draft available to the public.
His reason for taking this action, a break in the confidentially agreement, was
the “systematic dishonesty of the report” which he said was corrupted by “bad
faith” and “fraud.”

It might seem obvious to most
people that the Sun is the most powerful factor in climate change, given the
records of the gains and reductions of solar radiation, the Earth’s many ice
ages, and the simple fact that it gets colder at night than during the day!

The solar
mechanism is, of course, the Sun.

The global
warming—now called climate change—hoax depends on convincing people that
greenhouse gases, the exhalation of carbon dioxide by humans and mammals, and
emissions based on the use of coal, oil, and natural gas pose a threat to the
planet’s temperatures. In a very real way, hard core environmentalists favor
reducing the world’s population by any means possible and the reduction in all
the modern technologies that use energy, coal, natural gas and oil, to enhance
life around the globe.

“The
(IPCC) admission of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing changes
everything,” said Rawls. “The climate alarmists can’t continue to claim that
warming was entirely due to human activity over a period when solar warming
effects…were acknowledged to be important.”

In other
words, humans play a very small role in the Earth’s climate, especially when
compared to the power of the Sun.

This is
what some very brave climate scientists and meteorologists have been saying for
decades! They have been ignored or derided by the mainstream media who are
wedded to the global warming hoax. It had the power of the federal government
behind it (and still does) because it remains the justification for costly
programs. From the Environmental Protection Agency to the Defense Department
and all federal agencies in between, they continue to pump out propaganda and
regulations based on this Big Lie.

The United
Nations program exists to redistribute billions from developed nations to those
who have lagged behind. The recently concluded IPCC conference made the
transition from global warming to climate change to “sustainability” with the
demand that less developed nations receive funding if they are affected by
natural weather events such as hurricanes, heat waves, floods, droughts, and
tornadoes.

As Ralph B. Alexander, a physicist and the author of “Global Warming False Alarm”,
recently noted, “The link between extreme weather and global warming has as
much scientific basis as the pagan rite of human sacrifice to ensure a good
harvest.”

Alexander
noted that weather events “show no long-term trend whatever over more than a
century of reliable data. Weather extremes have occurred from time immemorial,
long before industrialization boosted the CO2 level in the atmosphere.”

Indeed,
the increase of CO2 has not induced or deterred the current climate cycle;
cooling. Since the length of interglacial periods between ice ages is about
11,500 years, the Earth is on the cusp of a new ice age. Ironically, the CO2
increase may be delaying it.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

America
and the rest of the world are in a confluence of events that are causing
widespread anxiety and fear. The Connecticut massacre is just one, isolated
example.

It is
being reported that the killer’s mother was as mentally unstable as her son. A
report in the British daily, the Mail, said “Friends and family portrayed Adam
Lanza’s mother Nancy as a paranoid ‘survivalist’ who believed the world was on
the verge of violent, economic collapse” who had been “stockpiling food, water,
and guns in the large home she shared with her 20-year-old son in Connecticut.”

Why Adam
Lanza decided to kill children and staff will never be known, but it fits into
a larger picture of the widespread fears surging over the planet like winds of
doom. The tens of thousands of Syrian civil war victims are too great a number
to grasp, but twenty children and six teachers and staff is.

We view
the world through the prism of our own life experiences and the young among us
have considerably less on which to draw in terms of understanding a world that
appears to be—and is—a dangerous place where our freedoms and our lives are
seen to be in imminent danger.

On Friday,
December 21, millions around the world will await the fulfillment of a Mayan
prediction that it will come to an end. When one considers that the end came
long ago for the Mayan civilization, there is some irony in this, but it is
testimony to the many end-of-the-world predictions that are embedded in
religions that billions adhere to and believe.

There are
Bible stories such as Noah’s flood preparations to avoid an angry God’s
decision to start over again or with the story of Armageddon. When the first
atomic bomb tests were successful, Robert Oppenheimer, one of its creators
reportedly said, “I have become Shiva”, the god of death and the destroyer of
worlds from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that
would be like the splendor of the mighty one.”

It was an
apt quote because mankind has arrived at a point where nuclear weapons can kill
millions. In the back of our minds, we all worry that Iran, a nation ruled by
fanatical Muslims who believe that widespread death and destruction is
necessary to bring about the return of a mythical Twelfth Imam and the rule of
Islam over the world. These leaders regard the U.S. as “the great Satan” and
Israel as the “Little Satan.” Irrationality has never been a deterrent to war
and, in the last century, we witnessed two world wars and many lesser ones that
arose from the human instinct to conquer and kill.

It is
noteworthy that the Iranians and other Muslims adamantly deny the Nazi
Holocaust that systematically killed six million Jews in Europe during World
War II. The resurrection of the state of Israel is one of the true miracles of
modern times after the passage of two thousand years.

The
prospects for avoiding a Middle East cataclysm are growing slimmer as the Obama
administration has hued closely to the belief—disproven throughout history—that
one can resolve such outcomes by talking
to one’s enemies, even those who have openly stated their wish to kill us. In a
world filled with nations in the grip of despots—often elected to office—this
is wishful thinking to the point of national suicide.

Then, too,
since the 1980s the world has been assailed by the greatest hoax, global
warming claiming the destruction of all life on Earth due to the rise of carbon
dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. It has been rising although it remains a trace
gas, barely 0.038%, but the Earth has been in a natural cooling cycle for the
past sixteen years and shows no evidence of warming, nor ever could be affected
by CO2 which plays no role in climate change. What does? The Sun.

Religious
zealots have been joined in recent times by a new priesthood, the many
scientists who have been predicting the end of mankind. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich,
a biologist who worked closely with the current science advisor to the
President, John Holdren, predicted that “The battle to feed all over humanity
is over.” He predicted that millions would die. They didn’t.

The
Bulletin of the Atomic scientists moved its Doomsday Clock one minute closer to
midnight at the start of 2012, saying “The global community may be near a point
of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth’s
atmosphere.” Rubbish! The Earth’s climate has gone through many epochs that
were filled with catastrophes, including Ice Ages and magnetic reversals that
brought with them mass extinctions of species.

The
classic Bible story in Revelation depicts the Four Horseman, conquest, war,
disease and death.Despite these, the
world population quadrupled in the 20th century, given improved
agricultural advances in seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, transport, and
irrigation. Even so, we’re told that family size continues to shrink on every
continent, despite predictions that it will top out at around nine billion by
2050. But they are only predictions, much like the Mayan calendar prediction.

Lastly,
for Americans, there is the prospect of debt that could render the dollar
useless and yet we continue to see Congress relentlessly borrowing and spending
more money than the economy can possibly sustain; $4.8 billion is borrowed
every day. All good and bad things come to an end if prudence and good
governance is not exercised.

All this has long been known. In 55 BC, the Roman
philosopher, Marcus Tillius Cicero, said "The budget should be balanced,
the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance
of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign
lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to
work, instead of living on public assistance."

Finally, America is as deeply divided among its citizens as
it has ever been since 1861 when it engaged in a Civil War that killed a tenth
of its population. A nation this divided has little hope to sustain itself,
especially when one half of the population is heavily taxed to sustain the
other half that ops to live on government handouts.

A random, senseless act of violence such as occurred in
Newtown, Connecticut, only exacerbates our fears. There are, however, far
greater things to fear—real, not imaginary—and individually we feel helpless to
avert them.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Over the
past year I endured a hefty measure of stress due to a “noisy neighbor” in the
apartment adjacent to mine that caused me to lose thirty pounds. I could never
enter my bedroom without pausing to listen for the pounding, rhythmic sounds of
music he favored. I would be awakened from an afternoon nap by them. In the
evenings I could often not watch my television or read a book.

This
neighbor was visited four times by the local police, responding to the noise
ordinances that prohibit such behavior, but it did not cause him to lower the volume
or when he chose to play his music. He received numerous calls from the
management office to lower the volume, but ignored them. In the end,
management, based on his behavior and other incidents, served him with an
eviction notice. He remained in his apartment for the sixty days, as per the
law, after he was given notice to leave and management was working on a court
order to force him out when, two weeks beyond his end date, he “voluntarily”
moved out.

I cite
this because, from the first day he moved in and shortly thereafter, I was
confronted by him in an aggressive fashion and had cause to be concerned for my
personal safety. As a gun owner, I began to routinely carry one, albeit
concealed and despite the fact that it would have taken me months to secure, if
ever, a concealed carry permit. My State, like Connecticut, has some of the
strictest gun laws on the books.

Among gun
owners, the cliché is that “A gun in the hand is quicker than a cop on the
phone.”

I cite
this personal experience in light of all the calls for more gun laws, most of
which I regard as totally idiotic. A background check is probably a good idea,
but it also probably says nothing about the mental stability of the person
under review. Certainly, we don’t want convicted felons to receive a permit to
purchase, but criminals are not famous for obeying the law. Those with a
history of mental illness should clearly be prohibited from gun ownership.

I am
reminded that the Colorado movie killer. James Holmes, was under the care of a
psychiatrist and she surely had cause to alert authorities, but by the time she
did it was too late. Even if someone is seeking psychiatric counseling, it does
not mean that local law enforcement authorities can intervene because there is
no actionable cause to do so. There are often good reasons to seek help.

There is,
in reality, little one can do under circumstances when a crazed gunman is loose
in a school, a mall, a movie theatre, or anywhere else, other than to have the
option to shoot him; waiting for the police to show up only results in a higher
body count.

For this
reason, I have no problem with laws permitting the concealed carry of handguns
and in those states that permit this option the homicide rates and home
invasion rates are considerably lower than in states that do not.

It is not
the guns that are the problem, it can be the “noisy neighbor” or a crazed
person bent on killing as many people as possible before either committing
suicide or “suicide by cop.”

By the end
of this month, the incessant, 24/7 media coverage of the Newtown massacre will
have abated. This will be followed by congressional hearings that will repeat
all the known facts about gun ownership in America and the Second Amendment
that grants Americans the right to own and bear guns. By “bear guns” it means
the right to carry them.

By this
time next year, the Newtown massacre will have been largely forgotten in the
same way the Columbine school tragedy and similar incidents have faded from
memory and discussion.

The fear
that 9/11 generated served only to create a huge government bureaucracy, the
Department of Homeland Security, and the expansion of surveillance of every
citizen. It did not stop the “underwear bomber” on Christmas in 2009. He was,
instead, read his Miranda rights when the bomb failed to detonate and kill
everyone on the plane. The realization that the U.S. is engaged in a vast
counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism endeavor has barely penetrated the
awareness of most Americans.

In a 2007
commentary, “Buy a Gun”, by Chuck Baldwin, he wrote: “One thing the national news media will always ignore is the practice of
lawful self-defense. For example, most people are probably not aware of the
fact that American citizens use a firearm to defend themselves more than 2.4
million times EVERY YEAR. That is more than 6,500 times EVERY DAY.”

“This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to
protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. Furthermore, of the
2.4 million self-defense cases, more than 192,000 are by women defending
themselves against sexual assault. And in less than eight percent of those
occasions is a shot actually fired. The vast majority of the time (92%), the
mere presence of a firearm helps to avert a major crime from occurring. That is
what Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) concluded after extensive research.
According to Rep. Bartlett, the number of defensive uses is four times the
number of crimes reported committed with guns.”

America does not have a “gun culture.” It has a “gun history” based on
their use by its earliest colonists and settlers. It exists because guns were
widely owned by men who formed local militia prior to the Revolution, stopping
the British at Concord, and, afterword, when the Constitution was written by
men who understood the long history of tyranny, they ensured that every
American had the fundamental right of self-defense and a need to be armed in
the event the government turned away from law and toward oppression.

Americans have reelected a President who passionately believes that
diplomacy, talking—often unconditionally—with our avowed enemies, is the path
to peace. It has never been the path to peace. It did not stop World War One or
World War Two. Wars break out by intension and by inadvertence.

Talks with North Korea have not deterred that nation from developing
nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Talks with Iran have only
provided that nation’s leaders, fanatical Muslims, with the time to do the same
thing. Talks with Syria did not spare the lives of tens of thousands by that
nation’s dictator. Both the President and his Attorney General have made no
secret of their wish to restrict gun ownership.

The whole world is one huge armed camp and it needs to be.

Reportedly the mother of the Newtown killer owned several guns, including
handguns, an assault rifle, and two hunting rifles. She had taken her sons to
ranges to instruct them in their use, was a “survivalist”, was unhinged over
the prospect of a world she believed was on the verge of violent, economic
collapse. The school massacre was a tragedy waiting to happen. The guns were
just the means with which it was carried out. Had any of the teachers or
administrators at the school been armed, it might have been stopped or mitigated.

These are matters that go well beyond defending oneself against a
neighbor acting in ways that disturb those around them. The four visits by
police to my noisy neighbor had no effect except to build a file that could be
used to evict him. He’s gone. I am safe again.

America already has thousands of laws on the books regarding the purchase
and carry of guns. In Colorado in the immediate wake of the Newtown massacre,
more than four thousand people applied to secure permits to purchase guns. We
need less laws and more guns. They will protect people in ways a desperate call
to the local police cannot.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.